The Empty Valley of My Heart
by latbfan
Summary: One-Shot. Klaus has an unexpected visitor from Mystic Falls.


_A/N: An imagined cross-over in Stefan's POV that takes place after "Bloodletting" (The Originals 1.7) and "Death and the Maiden" (The Vampire Diaries 5.7). This relies heavily on my own head-canon, as seen in my previous TVD fics, especially "Guilty Pleasure," whereupon I make the assumption that Klaus and Stefan were romantically involved in the 1920s and had a one-night stand prior to Klaus leaving Mystic Falls at the end of S4._

* * *

"Stefan," Klaus says with a disingenuous grin as he opens the door to the plantation home outside New Orleans. He leans casually against the frame, but I know him too well to miss the defensive position and the way he sniffs the air to see if anyone else is with me. "What an unpleasant surprise. Has the entire merry band of Mystic Falls misfits comes to punish me for imagined crimes committed against puppies and Christmas and the American Way?"

This is already not going how I hoped it would. Asking Klaus for favors is always risky, and I wanted to find him relaxed and in a good mood, basking in the love of his reunited family. Instead, he's touchy and suspicious.

"What are you talking about?"

Klaus looks uncharacteristically confused for a split second, the expression passing so quickly I may have imagined it, before the charming grins returns, dimples and all.

"You're not here with Tyler?"

"Tyler Lockwood's here?"

"Irrelevant, mate," he assures me, finally opening the door and waving me inside. "What brings you to New Orleans and my humble home?"

Like the house in Mystic Falls, this residence not in any way humble. It's expansive and luxurious. Everything is tasteful and so artfully arranged it could be in a magazine. It's impersonal and I know everything's been stolen. I clench my fists to keep from finding matches and setting the whole thing ablaze. It doesn't make any sense, but my hatred of this room consumes me because I miss the cozy fireplace in the townhouse in Chicago where he and Rebekah lived in the 1920s.

Now that Tessa reversed her spell, I have the opposite of amnesia. I remember everything. Absolutely everything. Every detail of every single thing that's ever happened in my long life. Every thought, every dream, every fantasy. I even remember writing it down in my journals differently than it actually happened, and most of it is memories better left forgotten.

Standing here, I remember the smell of Klaus' cologne lingering on his favorite chair by the window, the dust motes swirling in the afternoon sunlight while he read, the impatient tapping of his foot that meant he was bored and I was about to be taken to his bed.

I feel the remembered passion between us as if it's happening now, not ninety years ago. I have to shake my head to stay here, in this room, and not that other room that doesn't even exist anymore. My mind is wandering like this all the time, immersed in memories so vivid it's hard to know what's real. Distracted and pained, I close my eyes and take deep breaths.

"_I need to know you're okay," _Elena said.

Christ, I've never been okay. Not without her. And she doesn't love me. Not like that anymore. So no, Elena, actually, I'm not fine, and I don't imagine I'll be fine for quite some time, if ever again. And now, thanks to Tessa, I can remember all the many ways I've never even come close to approximating fine.

Coming here was a terrible idea. On his best days, Klaus is unpredictable and violent, and I can already tell today isn't a good day. I should have asked Elijah, the one remaining Original I haven't slept with, for help. I'm an idiot for thinking Klaus'll feel any kind of loyalty or nostalgia. That he'd understand what it feels like to be betrayed by the people he loves.

"Stefan?" Klaus prompts. "Why are you here?"

"I need your help."

"Oh, this should be entertaining." Klaus laughs as he steers me towards the parlor with a hand on my shoulder. "Scotch, or are you feeling peckish?"

I'd steadily worked my way through the coolers of blood bags on the drive from Mystic Falls, sucking down one after another as the miles blurred past because it was the only way I could concentrate on the road. If I wasn't drinking, I was thinking and remembering and lost in thoughts. But I'm still hungry. I will always be hungry.

"Scotch," I say.

"So what adventures have I missed that require my assistance?" he asks over his shoulder while pouring drinks. "I've been a bit preoccupied, mate, so I haven't kept up with Mystic Falls theatrics."

I don't believe him. There's no way Klaus Mikaelson left town with Silas and two Petrova doppelgangers on the loose, not to mention Caroline Forbes, and didn't have informants in place. Knowing Elijah, he left informants too. The good people of Mystic Falls are compelled so often it's a wonder they can function at all. Then again, that probably explains quite a few people and their ability to repeatedly choke down obvious lies.

He hands me a heavy crystal glass I can't seem to hold steady. Klaus settles into the sofa across from me, his gaze fixed on my shaking hand. I intend to sip my drink but gulp it instead. It's good scotch, and without the blood to make me forget everything else, it's difficult to moderate. Besides, if the glass is empty, there's less chance of spilling and maybe he'll stop look at me and I can stop fixating on his lips and remembering exactly what they taste like.

"I want you to compel me," I say, forcing myself to look him in the eye.

Right on cue, as if it heard me and wants to protest, my phone vibrates in my pocket again. It's either Damon or Elena. Someone's called every few minutes since I left town without telling them where I was going.

"Well." Klaus leans forward, his glass cradled in his elegant hands that I can feel in my hair as if he's touching me now. "This is an interesting development." Klaus finishes the rest of his drink in a single swallow and gestures for my empty glass.

"Will you do it?" When he doesn't answer, I can't stop myself from snapping, "Just this once, can you do someone a favor and not be a dick about it?" I snatch my refilled glass out of his hand and throw it back, holding the liquor in my mouth for a second before swallowing.

"It's not in my nature," he says with a grin as he settles back down, like we have all the time in the world and I'm not losing my fucking mind.

I pace the spacious room that reminds me too much of my childhood home. I can remember my mother, the sound of my own infant cries when she asked Damon to take care of me. I remember her cool lips on the top of my head and Damon's frantic begging for her to not leave him. I remember his tears splashing onto my face.

Everything reminds me of something else now. I remember all of it, even the times when I had blacked out while it was happening. It disgusts me, most of it. And the fact that the memories are horrible but make me hungry disgusts me even more.

"I thought killing Silas would help," I finally admit. I buried that asshole. I watched the dirt cover the face that was identical to mine. "I thought it would make me feel better because I killed him after he took everything from me. I don't know why I thought ending him would make things right, but I did. I held onto my sanity thinking that, only it didn't work, and now I feel like I'm losing my mind."

Klaus doesn't answer, but I can see he understands that crushing disappointment when you've risked everything and won, but somehow lost because your gamble didn't work and nothing has changed. Looking back on my need for vengeance, I admit it doesn't make a lot of sense, but it was supposed to fix me. I was supposed to bury my anger. My memories. I dug the grave deep, and I thought I would walk away from it a new man. Stefan without blood's delicious siren song of oblivion forever calling to me. Stefan without jealousy or anger because Elena chose Damon. I wanted killing Silas to be my own version of the cure. But it wasn't. It was just another body to deal with and more blood on my hands.

My phone vibrates again, and I stop pacing and close my eyes so I can feel it. The physical proof in my pocket that they do care about me. They do. They didn't leave me to rot in that safe all summer out of spite. They just didn't know. They love me, both of them. They just love each other more.

"Stefan," Klaus softly says, calling me out of my head and back to this room. "What's happened?"

"It doesn't matter," I whisper. "Just." I swallow the urge to throw furniture through the windows. I've done that before. Eighteen different times. I know the different sounds of breaking glass, and I can't help but wonder what Klaus' windows look like when they shatter. And thank God Klaus doesn't have human underlings around at the moment or I'd have to tear into someone just to make it stop. I don't need a list to remember them all anymore.

"Please," I beg. "Will you help me?"

He's standing in front of me in a flash, his movement too fast for my eyes to track. His hands are gentle as he cups my face and forces me to look at him. He shakes his head when my phone vibrates for the third time.

"Might I suggest either turning it off or calling Elena back? Or is it Damon who's pestering you?" When I don't answer he knowingly nods and takes my glass from me, once again refilling it. "I see. It's both of them, independent of each other, incessantly contacting you to ensure you're not in danger. But something tells me you like knowing they're concerned, even though you want me to make you forget whatever it is they've done to hurt you."

"It's not them," I say, once more returning to my chair. "Silas." I sigh, not sure how to begin. "I'm his doppelganger. Did you know that?"

"I may have heard something along those lines," he admits with a shrug, confirming what I suspected about him leaving an informant somewhere in Mystic Falls.

"Silas attacked me. I spent the summer locked in a safe in the quarry, drowning over and over again."

"Sounds awful," he sincerely says.

He sounds legitimately sorry, and I remember he suffered the Hunter's Curse for 52 years, 4 months, and 9 days. Which is considerably longer than a summer. He, too, would've had visions. Trapped inside his own head with no escape, no way of knowing when or how it would stop and begging for the peace of death. And in the end, it wasn't his brothers and sisters who saved him. The visions simply stopped.

"When you're daggered, does it hurt?"

He looks away from me and shrugs. "Those never worked on me."

"But you've used them on your siblings."

He nods and sips his drink. "I've not inquired, but from observation, I would say that the initial daggering is quite painful. But after the spell takes hold, they're no longer in pain. They don't dream or realize the passage of time. They just." He sighs. "Sleep. Oblivious and peaceful slumber."

Lucky bastards.

"Where are they?"

"The daggers?" he asks.

"Your brother and sister. I heard they're here with you."

"Rebekah is acting a trollop with the vampire I raised as if he were my own son who's taken my city and claimed it as his own. And I bit Elijah and left him to hallucinate in the bayou with the werewolf he chose over me."

"Wow. That's." I clear my throat before swallowing the last of my scotch. I'm glad I didn't go looking for Elijah if he's been bitten. He can't die that way, but it can't be good. But there really isn't anything to say after that kind of revelation. "Yeah."

"And unlike you, I cannot be compelled to forget my miseries. Not that I've agreed to do as you've asked. And while the sharing of suffering is supposed to be good for the soul, I find it tedious, so what exactly do you want me to do?"

"Can you use compulsion to undo a spell? The witch who made Silas and the cure did something. I can't remember everything like this."

Klaus shakes his head. "Compulsion can't undo magic. And while New Orleans is overrun with witches, there's a bit of a situation at the moment, so none will be able to assist you. You're better off asking Bonnie Bennett."

"That's." I sigh. "Complicated. Can you compel me to not be a ripper?"

Klaus throws back his head and laughs. "Stefan. Mate." He chuckles and shakes his head. "I expect such idiocy from newborns, not a vampire of your age and distinction. That's not how compulsion works, which you well know."

"It's worth a try," I insist. "Just compel me not to kill when I feed. What's the harm?"

"Your desire won't cease to exist," he says. "You'll still want to drink until there's nothing left. Compulsion can't stop that."

"But it'll stop me. And I don't want to drink until it's all gone. I never have."

"Come now, Stefan. Let's not sit in my home and drink my scotch and insult me by lying when begging for favors. You want to suck every last drop out of a person before dropping their body at your feet and moving onto the next. You're just weary of feeling guilty on the back-end. You don't need compulsion. You need a good therapist."

I look at him, and he smiles pleasantly back. But there's no mistaking the resolve in his expression. He won't even try. Dammit.

Dammit dammit dammit.

"Third try's the charm?"

"I want to forget this summer."

The constant hunger that burned through my veins. The heavy weight of the watery darkness. The visions of Damon and Elena and their love when in reality they spent the summer grateful I was gone so they didn't have to feel guilty.

"No help there either."

"Why not?"

"Because it's not the confinement and reoccurring death that's troubling you."

"Klaus," I implore. "Please. I'll beg you if you want. I can't sleep. I." I can't close my eyes without feeling the water in my throat, my lungs struggling to breathe it and not being able to. "Whatever Tessa did makes it feel like it's happening all over again all the time. Like I'm still there. I don't want to remember anything about that safe."

"You just want to forget it wasn't your Elena who saved you."

"How do you know it wasn't?" I snap.

Klaus shrugs. All the mocking is gone from his voice, and he sounds incredibly old and sad. "She was too busy shagging your brother, and what you really want is to not be disappointed because you were betrayed by the people you love the most. I understand, luv, and I assure you, I'm not withholding assistance out of spite."

"Then what the hell did I drive all this way for?" I slump down in my chair and consider shattering his fancy crystal glass, which surely has a long and impressive history because Klaus only surrounds himself by stolen treasures.

"Is the pleasure of my company not soothing?" he asks with a grin I've seen before, usually in his bed. When I don't respond, he rests his head in his hand as he examines me.

"I am my own worst enemy," I whisper. "I don't want to spend another century with only myself for company. I wanted this time to be different. And with her, I thought it could be."

Elena didn't choose to become a vampire. It happened because of me. Because of my actions. Her entire life has been the result of choices made by other people, her merely reacting to things out of her control. All she has is her own free will when it comes to her heart. And I was lucky enough to have her love for a while. But it's Damon's good fortune now. He will be the better man because of her, not me.

"You wanted to come home," he quietly says. "A sentiment I share." My phone vibrates again and Klaus shakes his head, obviously annoyed with me. "But if you were truly hopeless and alone, you wouldn't allow that insufferable device to keep going off. You would've left it behind or thrown it from the window. You find solace in the fact that you have loved ones who will continue to call until you respond."

"Tessa said Elena and I are fated to be soul mates. That we exist to bring balance to the original immortality spell."

Saying it out loud like that makes me sound like a lunatic. But that doesn't change the fact that Elena is my true love. I didn't need a crazed witch to tell me what I already know. But what does the story of Tessa and Amara and Silas prove? Because in the end, no matter Tessa's wrath or punishment, Silas and Amara never stopped loving each other. Am I another Silas in her story, destined to love and never have my soul mate? Or am I her, the twisted scorned lover so hellbent on revenge that I make my own life miserable?

"Rubbish. Witches are notoriously untrustworthy, mate. She may have been telling you the truth, but odds are she wasn't."

I scoff and shake my head. "You've always relied on witches and magic."

"Means to an end, Stefan. Doesn't mean I believe everything they tell me. And neither should you."

"But what if it's true?" I ask, voicing at last the nagging feeling I've had since before Elena turned. "What if she's the only one I'll ever truly love. What if doppelgangers can only love other doppelgangers?"

"For fuck's sake." Klaus slams his glass onto the table, making me jump. "You're as bad as Elijah, who has stars in his eyes like a sixteen year old girl, believing a baby, a squalling, smelly, selfish, demanding baby, will fix everything that's gone awry in a millennium."

"What are you talking about?"

"And Rebekah," he continues, ignoring my question. "With her endless melodramatic prattling about true love and devotion and the bonds between siblings. I wish someone could dagger me when I'm surrounded by such sentimental fools. Makes me want to heave, the whole lot of you."

He angrily snatches up the empty glasses and pours so forcefully some spills onto the polished table. He wipes at the spill with his hand, licking the scotch from his fingers before handing me my glass and slumping into his chair.

"You loved before Elena Gilbert," he says, glaring at me. "Both Elijah and I loved Tatia, who was a doppelganger, and we are not. And not to boast, but she was more than fond of the two of us. We all have countless opportunities to love and be loved in our long lives. Rest assured, you will love again."

"I just don't want to feel this way anymore," I finally admit. "I'm tired of being so alone, of my heart being empty."

"You aren't in pain because your heart is empty, Stefan. Quite the opposite, in fact."

My phone vibrates and, once again too fast for me to see, Klaus is before me. On his knees at my feet, he pulls my phone from my pocket and swipes the screen.

He quietly laughs. "You have 73 missed calls, mate. 22 voicemails. No doubt there would be more, but you've surely run out of storage at this point. 49 text messages." He waves the phone in front of me. "I'm just going to." He quickly types.

"Wait. What are you doing?"

"I appreciate your concern," he reads. "Please know that I'm well and safe. I'll return home shortly."

"They're going to know I didn't write that."

"Fine," he says, thrusting the phone in my hand. "Say it your way. But say it already so we can turn off that infernal device or so help me, I will bite you and then you won't have to worry about your little memory problem."

I quickly type a text to both Damon and Elena, and Klaus takes the phone from me as soon as I hit send. He switches it off and sets it on the table.

"Now that we've taken care of that," he says, his hand resting on my knee. "Perhaps I can think of something to take your mind off of your current dilemmas before you head back?"

* * *

_If you're as infatuated with Sleepy Hallow as I am, check out CreepingMuse's She and He and JWAB's Conversations with Photographs. Both of them will amaze and delight._


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